Robert Go, Yogyakarta – Trailing her opponents by as much as 30 percentage points in the latest opinion polls, President Megawati Sukarnoputri has much ground to cover. But with just two weeks left in the campaigning period, she's hitting it walking.

In Bali and Yogyakarta last week, the President changed little from her standard speech and used the same jokes to draw chuckles from the crowd. She basked as thousands chanted "Mega! Mega! Mega!" Her focus, observers said, should be two-pronged: To reclaim voters who deserted her Indonesian Democratic Party-Struggle (PDI-P) party in last April's parliamentary election, and to make as many inroads as possible in wooing the country's millions of undecided voters.

A balance between shaking hands at PDI-P strongholds and exploring uncharted territory, where crowds may be sparse and likely to be less adoring, analysts suggested, should be the way to go for the incumbent.

But if Ms Megawati's stops in Tabanan, Bali, last Friday and Bantul, Yogyakarta, on Sunday are anything to go by, it is clear that the President has chosen to campaign as the front runner who seeks to confirm that status.

Even on safe ground, however, the turnout for rallies are lower than expected and the crowds are not reacting as enthusiastically as they did a few years ago. These signs could spell trouble for the woman who has led Indonesia for the past three years.

Tabanan, which is sandwiched between population-heavy East Java and the economically challenged East and West Nusa Tengara provinces, is just one of three districts in the country, out of more than 360, where the PDI-P did not lose support in April. The PDI-P received 85 per cent support in 1999 in Bali, but only around 55 per cent in April.

But nevertheless, rally organisers in Tabanan promised 10,000 or more Megawati supporters from all over the tourist island. The numbers never materialised.

Only between 3,000 and 4,000 people showed up to catch Ms Megawati's hour-long stop, and a fair portion of them were brightly clad children or babies in mothers' arms – in other words, too young to cast votes. A rock band and three dangdut divas struggled to inject energy into the supporters.

In her speech in Bali, Ms Megawati turned to her lineage to win over the crowd – she is one-eighth Balinese and her father, Mr Sukarno, was Indonesia's first president. "I'm Balinese. I've got Balinese blood in me. This is a fact that cannot be ignored," she said. She added that the suggestion that she had to campaign to win votes on the island was "strange", as she "should not have to campaign on her own home turf".

The candidate suggested that her party's embarrassment in April was a betrayal of Mr Sukarno's memory and relationship with the Balinese. "How can you forget him and all that he has done for Bali?" she said.

It was a similar, albeit more energetic, scene in Bantul, a district on the outskirts of Indonesia's educational and cultural centre of Yogyakarta on Sunday. Ms Megawati's appearance drew only a slightly larger crowd of about 5,000 people.

Ms Megawati, who has spent much of her time as President behind her palace walls, may be paying the price for her seclusion and shyness.

Mr Wayan Artha, a trader who took both his children to the Tabanan rally, said at the end of Friday"s event: 'I just came to watch. I might vote for her still, but she has been disappointing as President. I'm waiting to see what the other candidates have to say, but Megawati was still not impressive today."

But many remain solidly behind her, despite the fact that she has slipped from the position of being front runner in the presidential race, which as incumbent she held for some time. Almost 20 million people voted for her PDI-P in April, and observers said they will remain loyal to her next month.

Mr Joko Santoro, a performer with a travelling drama troupe who showed up at the Bantul rally with the PDI-P bull and "Mega Hasyim" painted on his back, said: "I'm with Mega all the way. I don't care what other people say, I think she has done good for the people."